The story below is an excerpt from our March/April 2018 issue. For the rest of this story and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
Bill Burnham is the owner-operator, with his wife, Mary Burnham, of Burnham Guides LLC, which combines their work as guidebook authors and kayak guides. They’ve written eight books and hundreds of magazine articles, and led more than 200 excursions. New editions of their books “Hiking Virginia” and “Best Hikes Near Washington, D.C.” are due out this year. Follow their adventures at BurnhamGuides.com
Bill Burnham
We sat across from each other in a small diner and he asked me again: What exactly is your plan? I’d put in my resignation as a beat reporter on a newspaper in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The lead-up was the decision by my wife, Mary, and me, that as a writing couple, we would shed our full-time jobs and become freelance travel writers and guidebook authors. In the transition, we would spend summers working for a kids adventure camp.
My friend asked our waiter for a to-go container. Wrapping wax paper around half a sandwich, folding the corners and tucking them in, he said: Good luck, but you’ll probably be doing this [fold fold, tuck tuck] in six months.
We did in fact run off to the mountains and join a group of amazing people at a summer camp in the Allegheny Mountains. And yes, I was driven to prove my skeptics wrong. But moreso, I held an ideal that I could share my love of the outdoors with children, teach and learn with them how to respect the land and live off the land, and have a heck of a time.
After a few years, mission summer camp became mission real life. From free-wheeling freelancers and camp leaders, we took on the role of surrogate parents: house, mortgage and bills. Breakfast and dinner at the kitchen table, school, sports and homework. And yet there was guide work to be done. So then did we strap backpacks on our young charges—niece Sarah and nephew Matthias—and hike the Rocky Branch/Gap Run Trail in Shenandoah NP as we researched our first guidebook.
There was a glorious Assateague Island overnight with Vanessa and barely 7-year old Josh, complete with wild ponies and a campfire on the beach.
Later, niece Heather joined us for the (now) hilarious run down Skyline Drive to Thortons Gap, Heather and me in a pick-up with no brakes, Mary in another vehicle in front serving as a bumper-brake.
There was a memorable Three Ridges trip with Sarah and Vanessa and the unfortunate rice-stuffed grape leaves cooked in too much olive oil. And more recently, an outing from Elizabeth Furnace up the Massanutten Range to Spy Rock with the girls, their boyfriends, and brothers Elijah and Josh—the first time I realized they were old enough to buy their own beer.
Never could we have imagined it would be our last hike with Josh, who we lost last year at the far-too-young age of 26.
As I reflect 20 years later, I am most proud of taking those kids into the wilderness where you face challenges together, both physical and emotional. And it’s not always pretty, and you don’t always get along. But you trudge up and over the mountain, and back down the other side. Then start climbing the next one. Some of those mountains are personal challenges, others are the loss of loved ones, and still others are taking care of those in need. I write guidebooks for a living, yet no guide could have led me along this path. Only hope, and I guess blind optimism.
Now a new crop of young kids is coming up in our extended family. In them, a new chance to pry up rocks in a stream looking for crayfish, tell ghost stories around the campfire, build fairy houses in the knobs and nooks of tall evergreens. And strap on a backpack and explore.
As owners of our outdoor adventure company, yes, we do wrap up people’s leftovers, as predicted 20 years ago. But we get to do it with a dash of adventure and fun, and with lots of memories of the cherished people and places along the way.